Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

Dear SCPE readers, The present issue of Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience is devoted to the use of cloud computing for business and the application of business in the cloud computing area. It’s clear that cloud computing has acquired enough maturity to expand its field of application to business. The number of institutions that are moving their production lines onto the cloud is increasing year after year, and so are the emerging companies that are offering services that follow the cloud provision model. The International Workshop on Clouds for Business and Business for Clouds (C4BB4C) held at the 10th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing with Applications (ISPA2012) (Madrid, July 2012) put together efforts done from both service producers and consumers. The objective was to identify the best cloud practices that produce an added value for the economy of any kind of institution. Technologies, policies and heuristics were shared, without discarding those coming from other areas that would benefit the cloud computing paradigm. All contributions to the present issue of SCPE except one are extended version of accepted papers presented at the Workshop. In general, these papers intend to focus on how services are delivered through the cloud platform as a popular strategic technology choice for business. They remark cloud computing as a consistent platform for flexible and ubiquitous service provision from anywhere and at any time. Also, the interface of software services on the cloud provides a rich area for research. As it will be seen, the editorial board for this issue encouraged the submission of contributions from a wide range of areas, comprising cloud computing, service engineering and business process management, coming from both the Academia and Industry.